Right Foot Green
by QoS
Summary: Drag Strip wins a game and loses a body part, as well as his temper.


_Author's note : This story is dedicated to anon_decepticon, who encouraged me to post it and contributed one of the puns. And a Happy New Year to you all!_

* * *

Drag Strip stretched as far as he could. Struts locked, and the cables in his right leg extended to what felt like their breaking-point. His other limbs trembled with the strain and his head twisted around as far as he could to see if he had reached a green spot.

He hadn't.

"Right foot green," Dead End repeated, with even less expression than usual in his voice. Increasingly desperate, Drag Strip calculated that his right foot was almost a yard away from the nearest green circle. It wasn't a great distance by Cybertronian standards, but at that moment it might as well have been a thousand mechanomiles.

He couldn't stretch out any further. He was half-sprawled across the floor and couldn't take his weight off his left arm. But maybe Wildrider and Breakdown hadn't been able to reach the green circles either. He darted a quick glance at them.

Breakdown hadn't, thank Primus. Wildrider was curled over Breakdown, his face all but buried in the white spoiler in a position that might have looked intimate if it hadn't been so obviously uncomfortable, but the very tip of his foot was almost on a green circle. Drag Strip's vents expelled a hot frustrated burst of air, but in the next moment he saw that it was actually Wildrider's left foot going for the target. Maybe he couldn't tell the difference.

Which meant Drag Strip could win! If only he reached a green circle.

"Right," Dead End said, sounding as if the last of his emergency power supplies were about to run out. "Foot. Green."

"I made it!" Wildrider plopped his foot down.

"He said right foot, you idiot," Drag Strip said. "That's your left!"

"Are you sure?" Wildrider twisted his head to see.

"What does it matter?" Breakdown could barely look up, what with Wildrider's weight all but resting on his spinal strut, but he still managed to contribute his own brilliant insight to the conversation. "This game is boring, and you can't make it either."

"I _can_ make it!" Drag Strip snapped. But how, slag it, how? Unless he grew a yard in length, he wasn't going to able to thud his right foot down on the green circles Wildrider had painted on the floor the day before.

Dead End sighed. "You all have thirty seconds to reach green."

Drag Strip wasn't sure about reaching green, but he knew his visual field was turning red. This was completely unfair. How was he supposed to move his right foot all the way over there—

 _That's it._

"Hold it!" he said, and drew his right leg back, twisting so he could sit down and pull a wrench out of subspace. Wildrider and Breakdown gaped at him but Drag Strip could not have cared less as he sealed all the fluid lines to his right foot and cut off the feed from his pain receptors. Working fast, he popped loose the rivets at his right ankle.

Even Dead End seemed to be staring by then, though it was impossible to see anything behind the blank purple gleam of his visor. Drag Strip ignored them all as he grabbed his right foot in both hands and twisted. Trailing a few broken wires, his foot came off and he took careful aim before throwing it. It landed precisely in the middle of a green circle.

"I won!" he said happily.

Breakdown half-turned to take a look and overbalanced, ending up flat on the floor with a clanking crash, followed by an "oof!" as Wildrider landed on top of him. He pushed Wildrider off him and sat up.

"No, you didn't," he said. "That's just your foot, not you."

"The rules said you had to put your hand or foot down on whichever colored circle came up on the spinner," Drag Strip pointed out. "The rules never said you had to be attached to the hand or foot."

Wildrider rubbed his helm. "I guess so, but…"

"But what?" Drag Strip said, starting to relax for the first time since they had started the game.

"But how are you gonna get that foot back?" Wildrider said.

 _Huh. Good point_. Drag Strip bit his lower lip and looked at his foot, now lying well out of reach. He thought over everything he still had in subspace—a can of yellow paint for touch-ups, his favorite polishing cloth, a few photographs of himself. Nothing that could reach his foot unless he crawled over and got it himself.

Before he could move to do that, though, Wildrider's optics gleamed and he scrambled over to the foot. Drag Strip flung himself forward, but he was too late. Wildrider grabbed the detached foot, ankle-wheel and all, and sprang to his feet, holding it over his head like a trophy.

"Give that back!" Drag Strip said.

Wildrider laughed, tossing the foot up in the air and catching it again. "Or what? You'll chase me? Oooh, I'm scared now."

Drag Strip had no intention of humiliating himself further by trying to chase Wildrider, given that he wasn't exactly the fastest 'con on the roads any longer. He sat back and folded his arms, trying to think what to do next. Maybe Wildrider would get bored with the game and give the foot back.

"You can chase him if you like, Drag Strip," Dead End said. "I'm sure neither of us will… im- _pede_ you."

"Ah ha ha," Drag Strip said sourly.

"But don't worry. When I write up this incident in my memoirs, I won't go into detail. It'll be just a… footnote."

Breakdown chuckled. "You know," he said, "for once I wouldn't mind if there were cameras recording us. 'Cause I'd love to see the… footage."

Drag Strip could hardly believe his audials. Since when had making stupid jokes about him been so much fun that Breakdown could actually ignore his own fear of cameras to do so? He glared at them all, wishing they would all drop dead, or at least offline, in their tracks.

"You'll have to give me that foot back sooner or later," he said. "Otherwise I won't be able to leave here."

"Oh, so it's a win-win situation for us?" Breakdown got up and dusted himself off.

"Not really," Dead End said. "If we don't give it back, we might have to wait on him hand and—"

"Shut the frag up!" Drag Strip felt as though he would explode if he heard another joke from them.

"And…" There was a faint crackle of electricity from inside Wildrider's helm, which sometimes happened when he was thinking very hard. His face went blank. "Uh…"

Drag Strip sneered. "What, you're not smart enough to come up with any foot-related puns?"

"Guess not," Wildrider said. "But I'm not stupid enough to unscrew my own foot either."

Drag Strip thought he might have lunged at Wildrider if Dead End hadn't held up a hand. "Much as I hate to admit this," he said, "Drag Strip has a point. He did win. And he needs his foot back if he's going to leave this room."

"Thank you," Drag Strip said through clenched jaws.

"Unless Motormaster carries him out. But failing that, I have a suggestion. Drag Strip, can you balance on your remaining foot?"

"I guess so," Drag Strip said, but that sounded dubious, even wimpy. "Sure I can!" He held on to a wall for balance and got up on his one foot.

"Good," Dead End said. "So you have a sporting chance. Wildrider, you're free to move about within the game board as long as you don't step on any colored circles, and Drag Strip will come after you to try to get that foot back."

Drag Strip wasn't exactly looking forward to that, but he didn't know what else to do, and Wildrider's optics had lit up with glee. So he nodded.

"And if Wildrider steps on a colored circle, I get my foot back," he said.

"That's right," Breakdown said. "Go for it, Drag Strip. We… hop you'll catch him."

"I hate you all!"


End file.
